Show MARK TWAIN Our esteemed exchange the Kansas City Times recently contained a lugubrious lugubri-ous analysis of American humor at which we poked some mild fun but we had not then read the following egotistical l exhibition of vanity by our countryman and humorist Mark Twain which he wired in answer to a notification from the Scotch Literature and Art Union that he had been made a member of that body Membership seems to give me vague spiritual connection with the literature of the peerage of Scotland and to make me n comrade of Scott and Burns The Times man railed at several of our wellknown paragraphera who make their living by turning the taking paragraph para-graph and who are not as Mark Twain I i VV is afflicted with vanity insufferable The real American humorist is always a man I of character sufficient to know and to keep his place as an American nor to be 1 caught toadying to a class of the most I clannish litteratuers in existence by assuming I as-suming to consort even in memory with the names of men who earned immortal I reputations through genius These same I Scotchmen will feel gratified to know I that the writer of that abortion known as C Huckleberry Finn considers himself on a plane with Scott and Burns and Americans will necessarily blush to know that one of their number could be so infernally in-fernally conceited However after Clemens notorious break at the Boston dinner a few years back nothing shonld astonish the reading read-ing public which he in his vanity and pride may do We hasten to agree with the Times that if Clemens work is the standard of American humor then indeed in-deed is it fast fading away But his actions should not be brought in play to condemn the class of men who are gifted and without name or heralding make uptime up-time smiles of life by aptly turned paragraphs para-graphs which form the salad of everyday living V |